"We’ve also heard some developers express concern about the long term future of Silverlight for Windows Phone. Please don’t panic; XAML and C#/VB.NET development in Windows 8 can be viewed as a direct evolution from today’s Silverlight. All of your managed programming skills are transferrable to building applications for Windows 8, and in many cases, much of your code will be transferrable as well. Note that when targeting a tablet vs. a phone, you do of course, need to design user experiences that are appropriately tailored to each device."

In other words, Windows Phone is going the way of Windows 8 on the developer side of the house. As is the case with Windows 8 Metro environment, XAML will be supported. While closely related, XAML is not Silverlight, as Silverlight developers working on Windows 8 apps have discovered.

Windows Phone Secrets author Paul Thurrott states this more directly than the Softies were willing to do:

There's one other bit worth a mention from the new post, and it's in the comments. Cliff Simpkins, Senior Product Manager for Windows Phone, offered a bit of information about XNA support in Windows Phone 8:

"While not explicitly called out, XNA is very much a part of Larry's statement 'today's Windows Phone applications and games will run on the next major version of Windows Phone.' XNA is fully supported in the next major version and remains part of the Windows Phone family. We remain committed to supporting our developers' existing skills and code as we move ahead - together."

Here's what I've heard about XNA. As Windows 8 developers know, Microsoft has decided not to include XNA support for WinRT/Metro in Windows 8. It's only supported on the Desktop. With Windows Phone 8, according to one of my tipsters, Microsoft still will support XNA in the Windows Phone 8 software development kit, but will be pushing developers to write games for the platform using DirectX and native code, not XNA -- just like the case with Windows 8.

When will we finally hear more information about Windows Phone 8 from Microsoft? Sources say it could be soon, like May.... Update: Another of my contacts said to expect developer disclosure for Windows Phone 8 to happen in June.

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